The CXO’s guide to understanding and valuing data assets

ORGANIZATIONS have been collecting and using data for decades. As the number of data points per interaction increased, data became big data — and at that point — its value dramatically skyrocketed.

Today, most organizations are sitting on piles of ‘exclusive’ data that can provide a unique advantage to anyone with access to it. And for that very reason, data is incredibly valuable.

According to a recent PwC study, the world is producing about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day, with 90 percent of all data having been produced in just the last two years.

In the digital world we live in, data already provides a competitive edge to a number of businesses, and more organizations are exploring creative ways to leverage data in order to disrupt their own and allied industries.

Although businesses are concerned about regulations such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), the incentive to align innovation goals with compliance requirements is greater than simply abandoning data projects altogether.

PwC’s whitepaper Putting a value on data highlights three monetization strategies that organizations in possession of large datasets can evaluate, in order to better understand the value of their data:

# 1 | Enhance current businesses

Organizations can use data to improve and turbocharge their own businesses. Data can provide insights about how customers react to certain products and solutions as against others.

As a result, it can help companies understand what changes need to be made in order to better align their offerings and portfolio with their customer’s needs.

Further, this data can help with new product development and the creation of new platforms to better serve customers.

# 2 | Enter adjacent businesses

According to PwC, this strategy taps into data to generate new insights about the customer’s needs and wants.

As a result, the organization is not only able to better utilize data to understand what other areas the business can expand to but also can create platforms to help partners along its value chain optimize their operations as a result of the company’s data assets.

Obviously, such opportunities need to be monetized, but they also provide a strategic advantage to those who’re able to build such platforms to serve the bigger ecosystem in their market.

# 3 | Develop new businesses

Organizations can benefit from this strategy in one of two ways. One, they could create new data or two, they could create new business offerings.

In the first instance, organizations must evaluate their data and understand how collaborating with partners along their value chain can help augment their data and allow for the creation of an entirely new and more powerful data product.

This new data asset could be monetized as a platform or support the creation of new offerings that are beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole.

The creation of new business offerings, which is the second instance, could really help organizations in the long term.

A real-world example of such a strategy can be seen in Uber’s move into the logistics space in Europe. It’s an entirely new product, based on data from its original business and some information from partners in the industry.

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